Customer contact center systems often employ automated response systems to handle at least a portion of an inbound interaction from a customer. For example, a contact center system may deploy an interactive voice response (IVR) system (including a speech-enabled IVR system) to enable the contact center to collect information about a customer, and determine an appropriate routing strategy, communication path, or execution strategy, for the customer. Such systems may require a customer to navigate through a series of IVR menu options or an automated self-service portal, which enables the contact center to reduce employee or agent overhead. However, this may lead to additional effort on the part of customers, in that such customers must spend time navigating the often lengthy step-by-step menus of the automated system.
Additionally, such systems are typically inflexible and allow customers to traverse one of a finite number of predetermined communication paths or execution strategies. Generally speaking, if a response from the customer is not one of a limited set of responses expected by the system, the system is not able to proceed and the dialog fails. Thus, what is desired is an automated response system that addresses the above issues.